Lies, All Lies!

It was disturbing to see that Ryan Burns felt that the Town Hall Meeting with the Planning Commissioners was a “four-hour blab-fest” (“Town Holler,” June 18). Perhaps if he had listened and had just plain cared he might have felt differently. He also might have understood more of what was being said. His flip manner and pitiful desire to sound clever made trivial something that is of great importance.

His mention of Dick Cheney came from my statement to the Commission and it had nothing to do with a “second coming of Dick Cheney.” I was referring to the widely distributed newsletter published by HumCPR. I said that after reading it I thought that it was written by a cross between Dick Cheney and Chicken Little. The papers’ misstatements and fear mongering were my inspiration for that. CPR is a group that consists of realtors, builders, bankers, owners of TPZ land, land use attorneys and engineers, etc. Now there’s an objective, disinterested bunch who clearly have no vested interests or ulterior motives.

Their talk of rural land rights translates to mean that they want to be able to build and develop left, right and sideways with nobody to tell them that they can’t build here or there. It’s all about the money, honey, all about the moola. Virtually every one of the fear-mongering statements in their newsletter is false and/or misleading. One article describes McKinleyville as a rural community with houses on large lots and friendly neighborhoods. What McKinleyville is that? The article claims that this rural paradise will be ruined by Alternative A because it would put all of the low cost housing in McKinleyville. This is nonsense. It is also untrue that no houses will be allowed on TPZ or ag land, no new development on rural land, and on and on.

Burns says that Alternative B is “the proposed plan.” There is no “proposed plan” — B is simply what the Planning Department has been pushing for because it contains enough compromises to keep the wrath of the greedy off their backs and enough crumbs to toss at the environmentally concerned. It is, by the way, not Planning’s place to push one plan over another. That’s not their call.

Kudos to the planning commissioners for their willingness to listen and the dignity, attention and respectful demeanor that accompanied that listening. Thank you to all of you for that. Having said that, I will add that the one disappointment that I had was the minimal responsiveness of the Commissioners. They were in a position to educate the public about the status of the planning process, to correct the many misunderstandings, and, on the whole, they did not do that.